Detour to Death Read Online Free

were dressed alike—suntan cotton twill pants and shirts and wide-brimmed hats; but nobody had to tell Danny which was which. The big man carried his authority like a battle flag. And he was much more than just a cow-country sheriff; he was doom come to catch up with Danny Ross. The devil he’d been fleeing all his life until at last he couldn’t run any farther.
    When the men came back the deputy looked sick, but nothing could alter the expression or color of Virgil Keep. He went straight to the phone, and Danny could hear him speaking the words with no more emotion than if he’d been ordering a snack from the corner drugstore.
    “Hello, Tom? This is Virgil Keep. Did your ambulance get back from Red Rock yet? … Good. We need it out here at Walter Wade’s place. Hurry up and keep your mouth shut.”
    The receiver went back on the hook, and Virgil returned to the center of the room. “Waste of time telling Tom to keep his mouth shut,” he muttered. “It’s all over town that Charley Gaynor’s been murdered. They’re even saying you people caught the killer in the act. How about that?”
    The question was for Walter. “Well, not exactly,” he said. “But he was the only one around—and he came in with the doctor.”
    “That’s what I thought. The fool woman never got anything straight in her life!”
    Virgil came and stood before Danny, and his eyes, dark and penetrating under heavy brows, were taking inventory of the bloody face and bloody hands. But they were doing more than that. They were measuring just how weak Danny Ross could be. They were following the line of his mouth, the lower lip bulging just a little, and the cut of the chin that wouldn’t hold steady.
    “What have you got to say for yourself?” he demanded, and Danny could have foretold the question word for word.
    “I didn’t kill the old man,” Danny said. “I found him that way.”
    Not a flicker of sympathy in those eyes. Just that knifelike stare.
    “Where’d you get all that blood?”
    “From him. From the rock, I guess. I don’t remember. I was sick.”
    “Why didn’t you call for help?”
    “I couldn’t. I couldn’t make a sound.”
    “You could move, couldn’t you?”
    “He could move, all right!” Walter sputtered. “He was trying to run away!”
    “I wasn’t running away! I was coming back!”
    Danny felt dizzy. He wanted a drink of water, but nobody was going to give it to him even if he asked. He had to explain, somehow, and it wasn’t easy when he didn’t understand himself. He had to take them back with him through that awful time when he stepped around to the front of the sedan and found the old man dead. He had to make them feel the shock and the nausea, and make them hear the yellow bus leaving and then the other sound.
    “I thought I heard a car pulling away,” he stammered.
    “I ran to see.”
    “Where did you run?”
    “To the crossroads. I looked both ways. I think there was a dust cloud off that way.”
    Danny waved one arm heedless of directions.
    “But you didn’t see the car?” the sheriff asked.
    “No, I didn’t see a car. So I came back and looked for tracks. That’s what I was doing behind the shed.”
    “Don’t you believe him!” Viola cried out. “I saw him when he came around that shed, and I saw his face. It was the face of a killer!”
    “Honey, take it easy,” Walter began, but he was wasting his breath. All this time the woman had been half hidden behind the counter, but not for a moment had her sharp eyes left Danny’s face, and not for an instant had her mind stopped working. “Look at him!” she cried. “Can’t you see what he is? A no-good bum, a tramp the doctor picked up on the road! A hitchhiker!”
    “There’s no law against that,” the deputy said.
    “And no law against what happened to the doctor? Or what happened to Francy Allen?”
    The sudden silence was worse than Viola’s screaming. It was like the unveiling of a painting, or the raising of a